Implemented Revisiting the Sleep Clause for SV OU

[ausma]

Earlier this week, Aislinn and the rest of the OU council unlocked our open mic thread to discuss Sleep's effect on SV OU throughout the generation and if action should be taken to address it. While Darkrai has been at the forefront of discussion as the most egregious Sleep user available due to its access to Bad Dreams, an immensely valuable Speed tier, and powerful boosting in Nasty Plot, it has also been similarly argued that the issue does not just stem from Darkrai, but from Sleep in the tier outright.

Here we will be having a more focused discussion on how to proceed with this proposed issue, and assess if it is even a problem at all. Below, solutions will be listed and briefly described. For more details regarding earlier discussion, please visit this thread!

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Relevance

Sleep itself is a complicated subject, as while it is elaborately intertwined with RNG, there has been a great deal of discussion as to whether the Sleep Clause needs to be touched, and if doing so would be a bad idea on principle. The Sleep Clause's design and implementation in modern generations centers around precedent set in Pokemon Stadium 1 & 2, a Gen 1/2 battle simulator designed and published by Nintendo. With this mod that has been officially endorsed in past generations, it has been passed down as a generally agreed upon compromise to limit the degree of which Sleep's variance can shake up games while preserving a major mechanic. However its in-congruence with future installments have led many to question the integrity of it due to its inability to be replicated on cartridge, and if it is just an archaic relic of a different era in tiering philosophy that ought to be abandoned completely. Though with no pressing incentive to have a dialogue about it and because Pokemon Showdown is where nearly all Smogon play is localized regardless, it has been left untouched as of this post.

However, in recent months, the variance involved with Sleep in its current state has become a far more prevalent factor in high level SV OU play as a result of Hypnosis and Sleep Powder, inaccurate sleep moves that are widely distributed to fast setup sweepers like Iron Valiant, Darkrai, and Hisuian Lilligant, and see additional usage on Pokemon like Alolan Ninetales that can easily fish for it and enable volatile wallbreakers. In particular, their presence on Pokemon like these has been widespread in the past week as a result of the extremely high reward involved with these moves and optimizations to reduce the variance involved with their inaccuracy. Options that can leverage some misses such as a held Focus Sash or dual Screens can aid in landing these moves more consistently and allow these dangerous Pokemon to muscle through nearly any check, especially as Gholdengo and Gliscor are the only Pokemon immune to Hypnosis compared to Sleep Powder and the accurate Spore. At best, it is an empty fishing attempt that completely wastes a Pokemon, and at worst, it is a gambit that can define games if the numbers fall in their favor. In SV OU this is extremely apparent, as the tier's best users were not available in previous generations, but the fundamental problem is still replicable in oldgens and different formats. Amoonguss embodies this as a multigenerational Pokemon whose main sets center around usage of Spore, and it can very easily execute the move with its great resistance profile, access to Regenerator, and solid all-around bulk. In SV OU specifically it has often run a Red Card, adding an additional layer of RNG that can potentially lead to a key Pokemon being put to Sleep with no turns burnt off. As a result of all of these factors coming to a head, Sleep is more hotly debated than it has been in years, leading to the OU council to believe that it is worthy of more formal discussion.
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Solutions

Solution 1: Upgrade the Sleep Clause

A very easy solution to this problem is to upgrade the Sleep Clause to a blanket ban on direct Sleep-inducing moves. This has been hovered among the council as the immediate option, and has been a popular solution in the community for a while. Because of Hypnosis's increased usage on the ladder as well as moves like Sleep Powder and Spore also existing, there is more direct evidence that would favor taking this route by suggesting that the clause in its current state is not sufficient at mitigating it at its worst.

There are counterarguments being made about it setting dangerous precedent on tiering status infliction in general, as Paralysis and moves like Scald both introduce a degree of game-warping variance to the game (although this can be contested by the fact that Sleep specifically has been officially claused, making it harder to compare with other RNG-based tools in the metagame). Additionally, it has been argued that the clause itself is perfectly sufficient at limiting the frequency of Sleep's worst moments and that taking this route would lead to unneeded collateral toward more balanced Sleep users like Breloom.

Solution 2: Do Nothing

Some council members and members of the community have also expressed that this is a non-issue and that the strategy, while popular, remains inconsistent to a degree where it is generally undesirable at a high level. Inconsistency can spell doom, especially if the strategy is entirely defined by factors outside of the player's control and are layered with RNG. However, taking this route doesn't necessarily mean ignoring the problem, as it can also mean evaluating individual Pokemon as opposed to the clause at large.

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Last but not least, a survey will be launched next week which will include questions about Sleep-inducing moves, the Sleep Clause, and Darkrai where you will be able to directly voice your thoughts on the matter in a quantified setting. Thank you!

 

[ABR]

I have, as many are aware, supported the ban of sleep moves for a while. It’s neutral / an improvement to many tiers and also a cleaner, less modded ruleset.

HOWEVER.

I do not think the appeal of less mods really applies or has the same value if most generations keep sleep clause anyway. As such, if rules are the reason, I think our options are:

1) Ban sleep moves in gens 5+ (5 already has the ban, also the tiers with no freeze clause)

2) Don’t touch anything at all (justified by 5 having unique sleep mechanics of how burning turns works)

If sleep is uniquely problematic in SV then it can potentially be banned for that reason. I just don’t think the simplicity / unmodded arguments matter much unless it’s applied on a larger scale. Obviously this would depend on the willingness of those other tiers too.

 

[Isaiah]

Sleep is so strong that it's actually acceptable to fish for 60% Hypnosis procs just because your Pokemon is fast, kinda crazy.

But I'm no OU expert, so all I have to say here is a lot of OMs have switched over to Sleep Moves Clause in the last year or so, and we're still cooking. Why? Because banning sleep moves is a net positive no matter how you frame it, and there's a reason so many OMs joined the train after STABmons/AAA. The possibility of losing games/advantage states to 2 versus 3 turn sleep rolls even when you try and bring strong counterplay is completely gone now, and hardly anyone misses it. I was reading through the "Views From The Council" thread after this idea was brought up there, and I was fascinated by the fact that even amongst the people who don't want Sleep Clause Mod removed, there's no strong argument for how/why a metagame with sleep moves is more competitive or actually "better" than one without it. Rather than pointing out how inaccurate sleep moves are "only" 60% or 75%, shouldn't we be kind of worried that people are opting to build around and click them anyway (even at a high level), just because the reward is that strong? And even more, that being consistently prepared for them isn't necessarily that easy? It got swallowed up by subsequent responses, but I really think stresh's post in the OU thread explains the uncompetitive/cheese angle really well, so I would give that a read if you haven't already.

Considering that a lot of the justification for nuking Sleep Clause Mod lies in the fact that it's archaic, unnecessarily modifies game mechanics (Effect Spore sucks and people probably aren't fishing with Stomping Tantrum/Temper Flare, but it's weird to edit these just to preserve such an uncompetitive game element regardless), and fast Pokemon get sleep moves now and actively fish with them, too, it's gonna take some strong reasoning to explain why sleep should be kept around in modern gens (and possibly old gens too, but that's probably another issue). We're past the point of "don't fix what isn't broken", since sleep being obviously broken is what got us here in the first place.

 

[BigFatMantis]

Considering that a lot of the justification for nuking Sleep Clause Mod lies in the fact that it's archaic, unnecessarily modifies game mechanics (Effect Spore sucks and people probably aren't fishing with Stomping Tantrum/Temper Flare, but it's weird to edit these just to preserve such an uncompetitive game element regardless), and fast Pokemon get sleep moves now and actively fish with them, too, it's gonna take some strong reasoning to explain why sleep should be kept around in modern gens (and possibly old gens too, but that's probably another issue).

I do think that if Sleep is uniquely a problem for SV OU then it's fair to look at it for SV OU, however some of the arguments framed here are a bit problematic as it goes against how we are supposed to be tiering. Primarily, the onus is on the people wanting to change the status quo to state why it's necessary to do so now. So there doesn't need to be "strong reasoning" to explain why it should be kept around - that burden lies on those who wish to change it and explain why now is the time to do it.

I agree with the previous post by ABR in that we shouldn't be arguing the "mod" mechanics to justify axing Sleep Clause in SV OU only. If it's about modding the game then the honest thing to do is look at Sleep Clause across all gens that have it as a mod. But if it's a unique issue to SV OU and there aren't better ways to solve it, then it's fair to talk about removing the clause and banning Sleep moves. Whether or not that's the case I'm not sure, but maybe that can be expanded upon in this thread.

 

[Mimikyu Stardust]

I personally think sleep clause as a whole should be removed in generations where you can't use it in cartridge. I think Smogon should stick as close to cartridge as possible since pokemon showdown is a simulator after all. It has happened more often than i'd like where i spam spore with amoonguss vs a stall team to waste PP knowing that in the cartridge i can't replicate the same thing with the gentlemen's agreement of sleep clause.

I would just ban Sleep as a whole as it is quite an uncompetitive mechanic for how cheap it is, just disabling your pokemon for up to 3 turns? and having a mod to justify this always weirded me out from when i started. Granted, i am a newer player but having archaic ruling that's seemingly kept for tradition and convenience always felt weird.

Also to answer the SV OU question, i personally do not think sleep is broken, it's gotten high usage recently with the newly found Focus Sash Darkrai and Iron Valiant behind screens, but this problem has felt overblown since SV OU has had many great sleepers in its past meta like red card Amoonguss to prevent Gholdengo and Grass types to block its sleep and of course Iron Valiant. SV OU often has problems/trends that felt overblown like Walking Wake and Quick Claw/Quick Draw shenanigans and it eventually died down so i would just wait and see how the meta unfolds, and if sleep is truly broken, holding a suspect test for Darkrai (which seemingly is the culprit) or sleep itself would be the best course of action.

 

[Teh]

Unless I interpreted this post wrong, this thread seems to be discussing sleep clause as a whole. If so, axing sleep clause across every tier in favour of a pure sleep ban would be disastrous. It might improve SV, sure, but what about the tiers that actually benefit from the inclusion of sleep moves? (RBY and GSC OU come to mind.)

If you want to take action on sleep just ban it on a case-by-case basis with a suspect test. Or, just ban them in every SV tier and keep the ban when moving onto Generation 10 and so on

 

[Lily]

I'm not sure how it somehow comes up every time but no, this would not retroactively apply to every oldgen. This is a decision being discussed exclusively by the SV OU council rn. Anyone playing 8 or below does not need to care.

 

[ausma]

I'm not sure how it somehow comes up every time but no, this would not retroactively apply to every oldgen. This is a decision being discussed exclusively by the SV OU council rn. Anyone playing 8 or below does not need to care.

To add onto this, if oldgen councils want to follow suit then there’s no issue with that either since this is a general dialogue with SV OU as a primary focus. But nothing would be changed retroactively without consultation or the decision of each generation’s respective councils.

 

[Minority]

The counterargument to outright banning sleep moves of "it sets dangerous precedent on tiering status infliction in general" is not valid because of the immensely wide gap between sleep and other status conditions not named freeze. One easy way to see this is to weight the number of buffs required for another status to accomplish what sleep does. There's an argument to be made that sleep is inherently broken and only a handful of lucky tiers had variables align to partially mask this fact.

 

[z0mOG]

Smogon Sleep Clause mechanics do not work on cart, and every format with sleep clause is bastardized because of it. Ban all sleep moves so the sims can be cart accurate. As an added bonus, no need to worry about specific viabilities!

If you don't understand what I mean

Hide

clicking a move like spore when there is already a sleeping mon will say "but it failed" on showdown. Obviously it just sleeps the 2nd mon on cart. This mechanic is relevant for trying to resleep on a wake up and being punished by a switch.

 

[MeepBard]

would like to thank the council for starting this thread as i think it's a great outlet to finally get something done about this.

i've always been against sleep clause mod in its current form. i think it is a very egregious, archaic outlier to current tiering policy and if such a clause were proposed today whoever proposed it would have been laughed out of the room. it opens up strategies you could only do on sim like clicking a sleep move again predicting a wakeup (when this is not a play you could make in a cart tournament with a similar sleep clause rule without the risk of being DQed).

but in regards to the solutions presented in the OP, i don't think action on the clause has to be limited to either banning sleep moves entirely from gen 9 OU or letting things remain as they are and upholding this fossil of a clause. as i've argued for in the open mic thread, i think a potential compromise could be to rework Sleep Clause to be cart-accurate. my proposal for this would be to simply prevent sleep moves from being selected if a pokemon on the opposing side is already asleep. this is not a new proposal - it's been suggested many, many, many (wow, this one's from 2011!) times and i have yet to see much open-and-shut criticism against it that isn't just "sleep clause mod works fine as-is" when, if there's been a thread like this just about every generation, it does not work fine and many players are clearly dissatisfied with the clause's current implementation.

the only possible hitches i see with this proposal are:

1. Effect Spore: in my opinion, this ability activating should not trigger sleep clause since it's an uncontrollable factor from both players and considering its low proc % (11% to proc on contact as of gen 5, measly 3.3% in gen 3, doesn't affect grass-types / pokemon with Safety Goggles as of gen 6), low distribution and general unviability in favor of a better ability on everything not named like, vileplume and shiinotic, i'm doubtful it'd ever seriously impact a game (if it's necessary to just ban effect spore then the solution is to ban effect spore)
2. Encore: this move has had proposed solutions in line with this new clause proposal either by allowing the sleep move to go through anyways since the opponent is intentionally trying to get you to break sleep clause (similar solution if a sleep move is your only move with PP and you cannot switch out), or to just gray out Encore in the event that it'd be forced to encore a sleep move.

going to avoid weighing in on the sleep vs. darkrai/valiant vs. hypnosis vs. do nothing ban discussion because i don't feel qualified to give an opinion on that at this time and don't think it's particularly relevant for this thread but i don't want people thinking that banning sleep or upholding a modded version of the game are the only two options here. we can just rework sleep clause going forward instead

 

[Karxrida]

The counterargument to outright banning sleep moves of "it sets dangerous precedent on tiering status infliction in general" is not valid because of the immensely wide gap between sleep and other status conditions not named freeze. One easy way to see this is to weight the number of buffs required for another status to accomplish what sleep does. There's an argument to be made that sleep is inherently broken and only a handful of lucky tiers had variables align to partially mask this fact.

The fact that Sleep is the only status to still have a mod dedicated to nerfing it in modern gens already breaks that precedent and demonstrates how overpowered it is. Even if you ignore that and cite grandfathering, Gen 2 decided to implement Freeze Clause a few years ago so that ship sailed anyway.

This is a pretty clear cut case imo. The mod breaks cartridge/Stadium mechs from Gen 6* onward, doesn't fit in with our tiering policy, and Sleep as a status adds little to nothing of value to the game. Just remove the mod and ban sleep-inducing moves.

(I honestly wouldn't mind this change applying to XY onward for some retroactive justice, but I'm not active in those metas and I don't have the right to tell them what to do.)

*I know Sleep Cause is not a cartridge mech in Gen 5 either, but we banned Sleep there so it's kind of moot.

 

[Eve]

I take issue with this being framed as "do we ban sleep?" by a lot of people here (including the post right below), because what we have in OU right now is not the actual effect of sleep. Sleep is very objectively broken in singles if you don't look at it through the lens of an extremely arbitrarily applied, and entirely impossible to replicate, clause. This is the status condition that let Vivillon, a low tier mon with our mod, become a household name in an Anything Goes format and force players to prep substantially for it. That should say enough. Even with the mod attempting to solve the issue, it's still only arguably balanced and almost certainly uncompetitive, so what's the point of keeping Sleep around and upholding this singular, unique blemish on our modern Standard ruleset if it literally isn't doing its job of balancing sleep? Especially if doing away with it allows us to free Darkrai, who players mostly seem to think is a good and balanced addition without it being able to flip a weighted coin to become broken.

 

[elodin]

at first glance, this proposal seems very silly and darkrai is obviously the broken component here, not sleep.

However, in recent months, the variance involved with Sleep in its current state has become a far more prevalent factor in high level SV OU play as a result of Hypnosis and Sleep Powder, inaccurate sleep moves that are widely distributed to fast setup sweepers like Iron Valiant, Darkrai, and Hisuian Lilligant, and see additional usage on Pokemon like Alolan Ninetales that can easily fish for it and enable volatile wallbreakers.

op is blatantly disingenuous by stating this proposal exists for any other reason apart from darkrai. in fact, the other 3 pokemon mentioned were available pre-dlc with hypnosis/sleep powder movesets and a discussion regarding a potential sleep ban never arose.

the issue here is that we have 1 pokemon that not only has acess to a sleeping move but also to: 1) enough speed to outspeed almost the entire tier; 2) an ability that makes it so hitting ur sleeping move guarantees free chip; 3) a move that doubles ur already absurd special attacking stat in 1 turn; 4) a strong stab with 20% flinch rate which can stop ur opponent from moving even on the turn they're supposed to wake up; 5) pretty much flawless coverage with 2 attacking moves.

there is absolutely no other pokemon that comes even close to doing what darkrai does in sv ou. if any of the mons listed in the op were half as problematic, a thread would've been made many many months ago to discuss sleep.

the issue here is that the risk/reward for every other mon when it comes to sleep makes the status condition simply not worth it, and that's because sleep has been way too nerfed to be a consistent strategy. sleep-inducing moves have absurdly bad accuracy (with the exception of spore, which is not used by any mon in gen9), and the status itself has a 33% risk of only working for 1 turn, which means often you'll simply have wasted a turn alongside your opponent while accomplishing nothing in return (this in itself also differentiates darkrai, because if you land hypnosis and your opponent gets a 1 turn sleep, you're still getting a free 1/8 total hp chip on them for 1 guaranteed turn). pokemon like booster hypnosis valiant and hypnosis ninetales-alola were used in the past and there's a clear reason as to why they were never seen as problematic: inconsistency. in 9/10 games you'd much rather just click encore or aurora veil instead of risking a 40% hypnosis miss, and the upside for when you do land it with one of these mons doesn't even come close to the reward you get for landing it with darkrai.

tl;dr: ban darkrai, not sleep.

 

[zioziotrip]

I don't think Sleep Clause should be touched. Sleep is largely an acceptable, even positive, mechanic that specifically Darkrai abuses to an extreme extent. To keep it brief since many have already went on length about it, Darkrai is in a very unique spot to abuse Hypnosis. It's naturally incredibly fast not reliant on an external source (unlike Valiant/Lilligant-Hisui) allowing it to run any item on any structure most notably abusing Sash on HO. Darkrai hits the most common Sleep absorbers being Gholdengo, Gliscor, Dondozo, and Slowking-Galar while easily being able to flip the table on other options like Hatterene by clicking NP on the switch. I don't think it's controversial to say at this point that Hypnosis Darkrai is wildly broken but I largely think it's a result of the mon itself rather than the mechanic.

Nothing else has the ability to force Sleep trades as unfavorable as Darkrai or the inherent traits to abuse the Sleep turns. The other offensive Sleepers are simply not nearly as strong. Hypnosis Iron Valiant is stuck with two coverage moves and has a very hard time actually threatening Gholdengo, Hatterene, or Gliscor to get off its sleep in the first place (assuming your coverage is even at all usable against the other team.) Lilligant-Hisui is super reliant on coverage, specifically Tera Blast Fire, to hit the majority of the metagame with it being pretty easy to force it to make unfavorable Sleep/Tera trades with mons like Corviknight, Skarmory, and Gholdengo. I don't think it's really arguable defensive mons like Amoonguss are problematic abusers. Very easy to choose what you fodder to sleep with Red Card being the only potential hiccup but meh now that Red Card is a known quantity most of the time leaving your fate up to what Red Card pulls is very avoidable (arguably not an issue for Balance.)

Amoonguss is a good defensive mon to have in the metagame which would be unfairly crippled from a Sleep ban as well as fair use cases like Yawn Torkoal and Slowking-Galar. I don't think it's a "no penalty" ban as you remove several legitimate defensive options to target one problematic abuser. I agree that from a policy perspective if you are to attack it from a mod standpoint, the change should be Gen 4+ like ABR said. Sleep moves are not problematic in SV OU, Darkrai is.

 

[Mossy Sandwich]

I don't think the current implementation of Sleep Clause should justify a Sleep ban, if Sleep is broken with one mon asleep per team, then ban it, if not, don't. As said earlier, Sleep Clause doesn't need to break cart rule since. If you were to apply it there, you simply wouldn't use Sleep moves if you've already put an opponent to Sleep which would be a very simple solution if we consider the clause to be an issue.

As far as Sleep moves go, I feel their randomness is pretty different from other forms of RNG-inducing elements that have been banned such as Evasion options and King's Rock. In the case of something like Sand Veil and King's Rock, your Garchomp or Cloyster can play as normal with extra chances to get an extra turn to win the game from there, but Sleep requires the player to invest a turn to attempt to use it. Not getting a Sand Veil dodge or a King's Rock flinch isn't too bad, you probably still got damage in, but missing Hypnosis means you've made no progress at all. Sleep can also only be applied to one mon at a time currently and, when facing a Sleep user, you can choose which mon is gonna be put to Sleep. Basically, Sleep tends to be a mechanic that's a lot more controlled than others as you have to purposefully go for it and purposefully play around it, it's a commitment. It's also worth noting that, while this is more minor, there are ways to block it through certain abilities, Grass-types for Sleep Powder and Spore or an already statused Pokemon.

I don't have the experience in OU to give much input on whether Sleep itself is broken, but if this issue didn't come up until Darkrai started using it, then that seems it might be the issue rather than the mechanic as a whole. If only a few Sleep-inducers are broken or uncompetitive, we should focus on getting rid of it rather than non-Pokemon aspects. If the current implementation of Sleep Clause is the issue, then modifying that is an option as well. I think just banning sleep outright is a pretty big leap that shouldn't be taken unless absolutely necessary.

 

[lydian]

current metagame aside, sleep clause:

• completely deviates from cart mechanics, which is obviously paradoxical for a pokémon SIMULATOR. we can't mod out the game to our liking, at that point it's not pokémon anymore.
• goes completely counter to smogon tiering policy, even ignoring the fact it's a mod that changed cart rules, it's effectively a complex ban. imagine if instead of banning last respects we blocked it out from being clicked after you koed one pokémon with it. or if instead of banning magearna we forced it to switch out after grabbing a ko so it couldn't sweep? you see the problem? this is completely ridiculous, yet sleep clause is the same idea...
• (putting together points 1 and 2) is only a thing because of stadium precedent. however contrary to stadium, nintendo CAN mod out their games and add complex rules, we can't, or shouldn't rather
• still doesn't really solve the problem of sleep. sleep immunities are very rare, and when you do get a pokémon that matches up favorably against them (e.g. darkrai) it really highlights the power of this stupid mechanic. if you don't have a sleep immunity or can't switch one in, having to resort to a "sleep sac" often means being down one pokémon, as giving your opponent up to 3 free turns while you're trying to wake up often means your sleep sac is just a sac. and as stresh mentioned in the views from the council thread, when you sac a mon to sleep you either need a secondary check to the sleep user, or predict a sleep move incoming, and if you do the latter incorrectly you're probably losing a mon on top of having your check slept later on. sleep clause is like a flimsy bandaid on a broken arm, it's not solving the problem.

i haven't played gen 4 and earlier so no comment on that, but i do think every gen 6 onwards ou should abolish sleep clause and in its stead completely ban sleep moves for the reasons outlined above, if you try to adjust sleep clause so its cart accurate you're still doing a complex ban that doesn't really solve the problem. i still think it's insane that a blatant game modding complex ban that doesn't actually completely solve the problem has existed for so long in modern generations of smogon...

 

[Baloor]

Gonna keep this short. On the aspect of what’s broken here, it’s obviously darkrai. The other abusers mentioned are far away from being as consistent as darkrai is. The move is what breaks darkrai but we are consistently reminded by tiering policy that we do not do specialized bans like this because a specific thing in x Pokémon’s kit breaks it rather than the Pokémon as a whole being busted. Sleep is manageable on quite literally everything else, I feel the majority of the playerbase would agree, no reason to remove all sleep moves because of one pokemon. Not sure why we should differ from current policy when this is a case of a singular Pokémon.

As for the current implementation of sleep clause and how it differs from cart. I personally never have had a problem with this. While I understand it’s a bit confusing how this is one of the only current clauses that changes cart mechanics and I understand the argument, I feel it makes more sense to limit sleep rather than remove it completely from the game. The status is annoying but I don’t see the point in changing what hasn’t been broke here.

 

[Ehmcee]

A lot of people are framing this in the sense that the discussion about sleep clause is almost just coming out as a way to "complex ban" Darkrai, to simply allow it to exist in the tier, but this fully ignores that we already have a complex ban in place just to keep the mechanic of Sleep alive.

Dozens of Pokemon are impacted by having access to sleep moves, and there's been a collective decision at the start of each gen that "These Pokemon should have access to this sleep... at least a little bit.". Sleep is understood to be a broken mechanic, and counterplay to sleep has formed around abusing Sleep Mod (because that's what it is).

Many people have discussed before how in a sense, Hypnosis and Sleep Powder tend to have "less" counterplay than 100% sleep. Because if you decide to have a dedicated sleep sack and your opponent just... misses, they now have the advantage. Sleep Clause Mod creates situations where you are rewarded for missing a move. This isn't unique to Darkrai, it's a situation that also happens for Iron Valiant and Lilligant-Hisui.

Smogon has been bending themselves backwards every gen to justify keeping sleep Mod in the game, when it creates dynamics that don't exist at all in Pokemon games, creates situations where you are have to rely on 25%-40% luck rolls even if you read your opponent correctly to hit their sleep move on your sack, and actively dedicate turns of doing nothing to get rid of the status an unknown amount of times.

 

[Isa]

Sleep Clause Mod creates situations where you are rewarded for missing a move.

lets not pretend like this is a unique thing. youve probably some time or other missed a draco meteor that turned out to be good for you. rby players can tell you all about tauros hyper beam missing enabling a followup instead of a punish. some arguments in here have merit, this one does not. it is completely fine for a mechanic to exist where missing is sometimes favorable.

 

[Brambane]

I am confused somewhat on the intent for this thread.

If this intended for the SV OU playerbase and audience, then I recommend OP change "Upgrade the Sleep Clause" to "switch SV OU to the Sleep Moves Clause." This seems like a more accurate representation of what is actually being banned in SV OU and lessens impact on metagames that use Sleep Clause not connected to OU.

If the intent is to change Sleep Clause because of the fact that Sleep Clause is not replicable on cartridge, I would remove all mention of Darkrai or really any Pokemon being broken because of sleep. The argument then is we shouldn't create mechanics and mod the game, i.e. the old discussions of simulators using exact damage percentages/amounts vs pixel percentages. And that argument really doesn't need to care if Darkrai or Amoonguss or sleep is broken or not; its that Sleep Clause shouldn't exist on principal.

And if the intent is that all metas should ban sleep since sleep is inherently broken, well then I would again probably remove much the SV OU mentions and focus more on how the mechanic introduces uncompetitiveness to the game regardless of the metagame in question.

 

[Eve]

Hate to double-post, but

lets not pretend like this is a unique thing. youve probably some time or other missed a draco meteor that turned out to be good for you. rby players can tell you all about tauros hyper beam missing enabling a followup instead of a punish. some arguments in here have merit, this one does not. it is completely fine for a mechanic to exist where missing is sometimes favorable.

The distinction here, of course, is that the mechanic does not exist. On cart it is always favourable for your strategy if you land the sleep move, as it doesn't lock you out of sleeping another desired target. Meanwhile, missing that Draco Meteor would still be good if we were playing on cart. The very silly dynamic of missing a sleep move being favourable is a result of changing the rules of the game on a deeper level than any other clause or ban does, because reasons.

While I'm here again, I would like to ask those who think keeping Sleep Clause is worth it- why does it have to be in the current form? People have mentioned several ways a Sleep Clause could be implemented that don't turn OU into a mod. The argument against this, I suppose, is precedent from Stadium, but a wholly removed mechanic being precedent for itself seems a bit too circular to be a sound point on its own unless you add excess value to tradition.

Would also note that we've removed self-boosting of the similarly stupid Evasion stat to an almost absolute extent, so there is absolutely precedent for removing broken/uncompetitive core features rather than nerfing them by changing the game around them (And no, comparing clausesless Sleep to Evasion is not unfair). Or maybe we should add an Evasion Clause where you'll only ever miss the opponent once due to Evasion, I dunno.

 

[Tio Chico]

Although some of us would like to be discussing other things instead of the sudden sleep, making some progress is always good.

Because we are subject to all types of RNG such as full para, Scald, accuracy, etc., I don't see why sleep needs to break the cartridge laws. Whether Darkrai was the culprit or the lack of Status healers doesn't matter, we apparently have a problem. I'm inclined to support abolishing the Sleep Clause and evaluating whether or not sleep moves remain, which makes me wonder how Yawn would be handled, as it doesn't directly induce sleep.

However, if for some reason the sleep clause is maintained and the cartridge remains broken, it is convenient and logical to implement an anti-freeze clause in which 0 Pokémon are in Freeze, as there is not even a move that applies this condition directly.

 

[UT]

which makes me wonder how Yawn would be handled, as it doesn't directly induce sleep.

The current Sleep Moves Clause on PS! that BW OU, OMs, and a few others use does also ban Yawn.

 

[ausma]

I am confused somewhat on the intent for this thread.

This thread was designed with SV OU in mind, so the OP title will be edited to reflect this accordingly.

While the subject is not designed for older generations, it’s still great if the points raised in this thread create a dialogue among these councils. If the clause is updated for SV OU and oldgen councils wish to implement it themselves, they can! Sorry for the confusion.